Catholic Church enslaved 30,000 Irish women as forced unpaid labor in Magdalene Laundries until 1996

What a horrific story.  The Irish Prime Minister gave a partial apology today for the government’s role in a 74-year scandal in which, a new official government report says, over 10,000 women were forced to work without pay at commercial laundries called Magdalene Laundries, operated by the Catholic Church for “crimes” as small as not paying a train ticket.
In Northern Ireland, a parellel investigation is currently under way, although it, oddly, is so far refusing to include that country’s Magdalene Laundries in the investigation.

http://americablog.com/2013/02/magdalen-laundries-catholic-ireland-irish-apology.html